case studies/good practices:
Accessibility Guidelines for TV Broadcasting of Japanese Government and actions taken by broadcasters including NHK
i.background of the selected case/good practice;
Increased demands from impaired people, especially deaf society in late 90’s
ii.overall objectives of the selected case/practices;
To increase accessibility of TV programs for hearing and/or visually impaired people.
iii.process/strategy used to implement the selected case/practices;
Japanese government set policies intwo steps. The first was announced in 1997 which set a target ratio of closed captioned non-live TV programs over the total non-live programs to increase up to 100% in ten years. The second step was announced in 2007 which set a target ratio of closed captioned TV programs including live ones to increase up to 100% by 2017 as well as a target ratio of audio-described programs.
There are several reasons of this procedures:1. In 1997, technology was immature to produce caption to live programs. 2. Both facilities and resources in broadcasters and independent production companies for closed caption was immature. 3. In 1997, digital broadcasting was not launched yet and viewers needed a special set-top-box to view closed caption whereas all TV sets of digital broadcasting which was launched in 2003 have a function to show closed caption by nature.
iv.business model and sustainability
A strong business model does not exist. Japanese Government financially support broadcasters who provide programs with captions and audio descriptions. Commercial broadcasters, especially small and local ones find some business difficulties in increasing captioned programs.
Production environment has been getting better. For example, several new companies producing captioning to TV programshave grown up and even a new company which produces live captioning to news programs by using a stenographic keyboardwas established and working with several broadcasters including NHK.
v.what exact changes/progress was achieved and how results were monitored/evaluated;
Every year, all broadcasters submit their target ratio of closed caption to the government and the government publishesthe degree of achievement of each channel. As to NHK, it achieved 100% closed captioning to recorded programs in 2006.
vi.factors facilitating and /or hindering the success of the practice (learning points);
Financial support for providing captioned programs from the government facilitated the accessibility but broadcasters have not found good business models for the accessible services and some of them seem to be not so active to increase the services.
As to real-time captioning of Japanese language, R&D such as speech recognition is very important to facilitate the caption service because Japanese language has varieties of characters, 50 Hiragana, 50 Katakana, and more than 2000 Kanji characters. This makes it very difficult to type in appropriate characters in real-time while hearing speech. We, NHK developed a live captioning system for news programs using speech recognition and a live captioning system for sports programs using re-spoken speech recognition. These two systems were already installed in news studios and are now in operation.
Accessibility is not only the issue of broadcasting but also the issues of conferences and meetings, addresses by politicians, press briefing, and etc but accessibility of latter is not so popularized yet. When you consider whole occasion, you can find bigger market of captioning or sign language interpretation, which will leads to lower production cost hopefully.
Captionedtext data will be very useful in content market and it will become business. The market of video on demand provided by broadcasters or other vendors is growing with the internet growth.You sometimes find it difficult to get an exact video or TV program you are seeking when you retrieve by the title of them. By utilizing captioned text or its processed data, you will soon be able to find appropriate video and programs flexibly and intellectually.
vii.ways in which the selected practices could have been improved?
The latest guideline has an exception of programs which need not to add captioning. This exception is abused to raise outward percentage.
viii.other general lessons learnt;
Social awareness of accessible services is as important as business models or regulation and legislation. Ironically the Higashi-Nihon Great Earthquake reminded us temporarily the importance of the accessibility of audio-visual media but still the awareness seems not to be settled to the society. Raising the awareness for accessible services of not only broadcasters but also ordinary viewers, sponsors of TV programs, and the government itself should be emphasized.
ix.references to relevant documents;
(in Japanese)
Reprot ITU-R BT.2201-1 “Accessibility to broadcasting services for persons with disabilities”
“Making Television Accessible”, ITU Report, November 2011
x.contact details for further information/reference
Takayuki Ito, NHK Science and Technology Research Laboratories
case studies/good practices:
Emergency broadcasting including accessible services during the Higashi-Nihon Great Earthquake in March 2011
i.background of the selected case/good practice;
NHK is the only broadcaster appointed by the law “Disaster Management Law”, in which public organizations appointed are responsible to play their rolesin their own territories.
NHKalso recognizes, as the sole public broadcaster in Japan, it one of our most important roles to provide emergency broadcasting news for safeand secure society. We regularly equip andmaintain systems and tools for emergency broadcast such as more than 400 remote-controlled cameras at sea ports all over Japan, camerason helicopters, and etc. NHK staffs are also drilledthe process ofbroadcasting emergency news after finishing daily broadcasting service.
ii.overall objectives of the selected case/practices;
Objective is to provide accurate information rapidly to viewers and to the central and local governments to save lives of people.
iii.process/strategy used to implement the selected case/practices;
As to natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes, Meteorological Agency is responsible to observe and forecast. Basically NHK receives information from it and broadcast nationwide as soon as possible using emergency broadcast systems.
We have two emergency warning systems. One is Emergency Earthquake Warning (EEW), information of which is provided by MA forecastingwhen and how strong an earthquake is coming. When NHK receives the signal, it automatically broadcast alert chime and information. (This emergency signal is also used to stop trains and elevators automatically.) The other is Emergency Warning Broadcasting System which was designed for general purpose of emergency but one of the most important use case is tsunami. When MA forecasts a big tsunami, NHK broadcasts a special signal which wakes up a type of TV and radio receivers automatically.
After these emergency warning broadcastingswere on-aired, all TV and radio channels as well as internet and oversea broadcastingwere devoted for reporting the disaster.
iv.business model and sustainability
NHK is the sole public broadcaster in Japan and viewing fees are the only income collected from every household.
v.what exact changes/progress was achieved and how results were monitored/evaluated;
In damaged areas, black out was occurred and most people were not able to watch TV news. Radio and One-Seg which is a TV broadcasting in Japan for mobile terminals are reported to have been very effective. Providing information through internet such as web news and video streaming was also very effective because most of mobile phones can access internet nowadays. NHK provided web news as well as news video streams although NHK is strictly regulated in video streaming.
Live captioning of news programs were expanded to more than double length in time (8h45m a day in total) by using all facilities available including laboratory’s experimental speech recognition systemduring the next week of the earthquake. Sign language daily news programs were also expanded in length. Foreign language services for overseas were tentatively provided domestically, too. All these contributed better accessibility of disaster news.
vi.factors facilitating and /or hindering the success of the practice (learning points);
The existence of a public broadcaster is very important because the public broadcaster can concentrate its resources to disaster broadcasting and its preparation including R&D.
Mobile terminals such as portable radio receivers, mobile phones, and mobile TV receivers are very effective and helpful unless batteries go out.
The accessibility of the disaster news programs may be evaluated not enough because it was neither fully accessible from the beginning of the disaster nor all day long. The captioning system using speech recognition has beenintroduced in actual usethis year.
Providing news programs using variety of media including internet is very important in disastrous situation because the situation of people afflicted by the disaster is in variety.
vii.ways in which the selected practices could have been improved?
viii.other general lessons learnt;
ix.references to relevant documents;
x.contact details for further information/reference
Takayuki Ito, NHK Science and Technology Research Laboratories